


Welcome to the New Age

by queenmab24601



Series: Endverse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, M/M, Multi, Trans Male Character, Trans Michael
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 19:12:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4888729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmab24601/pseuds/queenmab24601
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In a universe where Dean Winchester does not drive the Impala into Stull Cemetery, where Sam says Yes just a bit too soon, where it all just happens a bit too quickly...</p><p>Adam Milligan wakes up at home in Windom, Minnesota with the distinct sensation that he should be dead."</p><p>An Endverse Midam series that may lead into something more. For Midam week.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to the New Age

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The End](https://archiveofourown.org/works/824126) by [nicoleiacross](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicoleiacross/pseuds/nicoleiacross). 



> This is a Midam piece written for Midam Week (that has about zero base on today's prompt, which I am very sorry for. It was not planned this way)
> 
> Inspired by all the lovely michael/adam endverse pieces, with special credits to nicoleiacross's "The End". 
> 
> Also warning for an offhand mention of character death at the end, but it is neither Michael or Adam, do not worry, and canonically occurs in the endverse already. 
> 
> This piece may or may not end up as part of a larger series, which may or may not be finished by the end of Midam Week. We will see. 
> 
> Brief, brief mention of Michael as trans. Does not play into the story, but I thought it warranted a tag.
> 
> Title, of course, comes from the Imagine Dragon's song "Radioactive".

This is how the world ends. 

In a universe where Dean Winchester does not drive the Impala into Stull Cemetery, where Sam says Yes just a bit too soon, where it all just happens a bit too quickly...

Adam Milligan wakes up at home in Windom, Minnesota with the distinct sensation that he should be dead. (He was, but his role as the angel's last best chance was rushed along in this world and so he simply went from not being into being with no clue as to why).

He only has to look outside to realize something is not quite right. Mrs. Clarkson, the sweet old grandmother who lives next door, is hacking the head off of Mr.Smith who lives down the street. She's wielding an old garden shovel and looks quite determined. On the other hand, Mr. Smith does not look that good himself. Something about the eyes.

Adam has woken up right in the middle of a zombie apocalypse (the Croatan virus, they'll tell him when he reaches Camp Chitaugua). He bars the door, breaking his mom's old bedframe down for spare wood, and hunkers himself down.

It's not a good plan, but it's the best Adam's got.

 

Two weeks later, one of the zombies finally manages to get through the window that Adam didn't have enough nails for. Adam had run out of peanut butter and tuna jars just yesterday, and he was wondering when this was going to happen. He's been practicing throwing knives because he's not going to go down without a fight, but he also knows hurtling old blunt things from the knife block in the kitchen isn't going to last him long.

Adam doesn't recognize the zombie, which he thinks of as some kind of twisted blessing. At least he won't be killing what's left of anyone he knows. But he does feel sort of bad facing off against an older man in a Hawaiian shirt. There's something sad about it. 

Adam's moment of hesitation is enough to give the zombie an edge though, running far too fast for a man his age and chasing Adam to the kitchen where Adam frantically struggles with the old bread knife for what should be too long.

But in this world, Adam is lucky. In this world, Michael shows up.

The door falls down in a blast of smoke and bullets (the first human weapon Michael picks up is an old World War I machine gun). Michael is quick, taking out his own throwing knife (a proper one, and the second weapon he picked up) and distracting the zombie with it. When the older man turns around, and is in a position so that his blood will not spill out and infect Adam, Michael lets the gun fire.

The first headshot does the job, and Michael does not like to waste bullets, but the old gun is faulty and rips the corpse apart into something unrecognizable before it hits the floor. Michael shoulders the gun and turns to Adam.

Adam is never afraid of Michael in this world. He knows he should be, but there is something familiar about Michael. It's not the body, this young man with dark hair and tan skin and just the hint of where dimples would be if he smiled (Michael does not smile). It's the eyes - not the color, a strange green or blue or hazel - something light. But their intensity, their focus, the age behind them. Adam knew those eyes when he was dead.

"Adam," Michael says. "It's time to leave."

His voice is gravelly in this vessel. The words sound like they are being burned from the inside out when they come from Michael's throat. This too is something Adam recognizes, the presence of fire and heat and something primal and elemental and not human. 

They walk out of the house together and head West.

 

It isn't long before Adam regains his normal sarcasm.

When he first met Michael on Earth he was still a bit shell shocked. "Heaven Rattled" he calls it.

"It's time to leave," he mocks Michael, taking on the gravely tone of his old vessel. It finally fully burned out somewhere in South Dakota, going up in flame and smoke and charred skin while they were camped out in a Walgreens. The only warning Adam got was Michael telling him to avert his eyes. He knocked on the window two days later in the early morning. Somehow Adam knew it was him. "You could have told me where we were going."

"There wasn't time," Michael says.

"There wasn't time," Adam repeats, drily. He rolls his eyes. 

They're just twenty miles away from Camp Chitaugua and Michael just told Adam he's about to meet one of his brothers for the first time. 

"You didn't think this might have been important, I don't know, somewhere close to the beginning?" Adam asks.

Michael glares at him.

"That doesn't do a lot to scare me," Adam says, "I know you aren't going to kill me. If you were you would have done it a long time ago. Unless that would be a wierd show of faith for this Dean or something."

"I need to remind Dean he still has family left," Michael says. "Something to stand for."

"Something to say 'yes' to?" Adam asks.

Michael looks away.

Adam goes back to cleaning his gun, something they acquired back in South Dakota after Michael polished off their latest group of zombie pursuers. 

"Why haven't you asked me?" Adam asks.

"I need Dean," Michael says, still not meeting Adam's eyes. "While there's a chance he might say yes, I'm going to take it."

He's not telling Adam the whole story.

 

When they finally reach Camp Chitaugua, the place is in shambles. 

There's not half as many people there as Michael was apparently expecting, and Dean almost kills them before they even walk past the sign. 

Dean is clearly Adam's half brother. It's in the face - the clenching of the jaw, the strong nose and focused eyes. Adam's too off guard by that to notice the rifle he's leveling at Adam and Michael. 

"Wait, Dean," says the man next to Dean. There's a whole group flanking Dean, all looking like hardened soldiers. But there's something specifically off about the guy standing next to him just as there is about Michael. Adam knows he's an angel before he even opens his mouth.

Michael had to change vessels again before they got there. It cost them a few days and Michael had to make a few short cuts. He's in a cisgendered female vessel; which both he and Adam are uncomfortable about. Michael still prefers male pronouns, which he made explicitly clear the moment he came back. His frustration is clear and Adam knows he's hoping to change the first chance he gets. Adam had tried to start a very stilted conversation about gender and sexuality with him, but Michael had very clearly not wanted to talk about it. 

Adam thinks Michael's more upset about the human limitations he's now dealing with more than anything else. Humans deal with bodies; angels do not.

"This is my brother," the man standing next to Dean says.

"The skinny kid?" Dean asks.

"Hey," Adam says. "I'm  _your_ brother." _  
_

Dean looks confused and faintly disgusted.

"Castiel," Michael says. His voice is still low in this vessel, each passing day wearing it out with the fire of his true self.

Dean shifts uncomfortably.

"Michael," Castiel says.

Instantly everyone else in their group raises their guns again. The woman on the other side of dean with dark braids is the quickest. She's probably the group's best shot. Adam knows no one would do that much damage to Michael, but it still feels like an insult after coming all this way. 

"Hear us out at least before you shoot," Adam says. "What, the apocalypse comes and everyone forgets how to say hello?"

Dean grunts. Some shining example of an older brother he turned out to be.

"Dean," Michael says. "You need to say yes."

Dean turns away and walks back towards the camp. Hesitantly, the rest of the group follows him. Castiel gives Michael a faintly apologetic look and follows Dean as well.

"That means you're allowed to come with us," he says, before moving toward Dean.

"Dean," Michael calls out. He sounds desperate.

Dean whirls around, and the group lets him. He gets uncomfortably close to Michael and Adam steps in between them.

"Don't be a dick," Adam says.

"You don't know what you're dealing with kid," Dean says.

"I think I have a pretty good idea," Adam says.

"Adam," Michael says.

Adam moves to the side.

"Let's get this straight," Dean says to Michael. "As long as I'm alive, as long as there's a chance I can get through to Sam, my answer is going to be 'no'."

Michael looks away. Maybe someone else wouldn't know he's upset, but Adam's known him long enough that he can see the shift in his eyes.

"Come on." Adam gently touches Michael's hand. "We came here to go to camp. Let's go to camp."

 

There's no grand shift to Adam and Michael as semi platonic travel partners to Adam and Michael the unit, the inseparable, the if you're looking for one, you're going to find the other.

It's understood. Adam knows they're going to end up together someway, maybe even before Michael does. Michael's frequent need to change vessels doesn't phase Adam the way it does others. 

People aren't quite sure what to do with the charred out husks Michael leaves behind before he's gone for a few days and Adam's on watch, pointing out which body coming down the road belongs to the archangel. He can tell from miles off through Bobby's old sniper scope. It gives him some use to the group before Dean finds out he used to be a med student and stations him at the main cabin, where he gets a crash course in everything from minor scrapes to amputations. 

Then there's a raid of Croats into the camp, and Adam's handed a gun and Michael's nowhere to be seen because his last vessel burned out yesterday and Adam is floundering and shooting. 

By the time he's done, he's killed what used to be twenty some people and he hates that he's lost count, absolutely hates it.

Michael turns up the next day too late, and that's when they finally fall in bed together.

"I finally killed someone yesterday," Adam says, once they're alone. "And you missed fried chicken in the mess hall, but hey, I guess you don't care much about food anyway."

Michael frames Adam's face in his hands and kisses him, moving him together and backwards into the bed. The kissing isn't new, they did that before Michael left, but this feels more monumental. More physical than spiritual.

Michael is in a vessel much like how he first appeared to Adam, but the bodies are blurring together for them both, and the movements are awkward at first, human. 

The clothes tear off quickly at first, then extremely slowly.

By the time Adam is lying down in bed, looking up at Michael's face hovering above him, careful, searching, asking if this is alright, tell me Adam, I don't know what to do, who is comforting who changes and Adam pulls Michael down and they don't resurface until two days later.

It says something about the state of the world that no one asks questions.

 

Michael becomes human almost as an afterthought. Getting cut off from heaven does that to someone.

At first he's changing vessels far too quickly. Some don't last longer than two days.

And then he settles completely. Stops switching vessels. He's stuck in a taller man with caramel colored skin again. Adam wonders if he's found the type Adam likes best and was searching for them at the end. It doesn't matter to Adam the kind of body, really. The eyes stay the same.

They're eating breakfast together in the messhall, holding hands because they've been holding hands for quite some time now, Adam's not sure when exactly  _that_ switch occured when Dean sits down across from them. 

"Yes," Dean says. 

Adam stops eating. Michael doesn't.

"Michael," Dean says.

"I heard you, Dean," Michael says.

"Did you?" Dean asks. "Because I said  _yes_."

"Hmm," Michael says.

"Yes," Dean says louder.

Michael looks up at him but his expressions betrays nothing.

Then Dean starts shouting "YES" over and over until he's panting and angry. Adam puts a hand on Michael's leg.

"I can't do anything about it, Dean," Michael says. "Raphael closed the gates a long time ago. From there it was only a matter of time."

"And you didn't do anything?" Dean whirls on Adam.

"I didn't know about that," Adam says. "I didn't know I had a voice here."

"Well Michael sure seems to like your body," Dean says.

"How dare you," Michael says, quiet, dark, dangerous. But Dean doesn't stop.

"Or is it just that he likes your body a certain way," Dean says.

"Just because you never made the move on Castiel, doesn't mean you have to be jealous, Dean," Adam says. "Now move along."

Dean glares, but he doesn't say anything else. He gets up and leaves. Sits elsewhere.

 

Chuck is a nice guy, but there's something about him that freaks Adam out.

He's deferring and polite, and keeps tabs on everyone and has a wonderful long monologue about the importance of toilet paper that Adam loves. But sometimes Adam looks out of the corner of his eye at Chuck glaring at him, especially when Adam's with Michael.

"Do you like Michael or something?" Adam finally asks him one day when Chuck's taking account of everything they need for medical in the main cabin. 

"What?" Chuck asks. He sounds faintly scandalized.

"Because you seem really jealous when we're together."

"Uh, ew," Chuck says.

Adam doesn't even have time to look properly offended before Chuck continues.

"I mean, no, not about the whole relationship thing, because I'm good with that, trust me. That's really not the problem. It's kind of this other thing that I'm not supposed to talk about with you? And by you, I mean with anyone - it's like, picture someone dating your eldest child, okay? It's bizarre."

"So what, you think of me as your kid or something?" Adam asks.

Chuck closes his mouth. Seems to be considering what to say. Then opens it again. "Um, yeah sure. You're like my kid."

Adam doesn't quite believe him, but he turns the encounter over in his head before finally asking Michael about it.

Michael stares at Adam for a long time. He tilts his head. "Maybe?" Michael begins, before shaking his head. "No. I don't believe it."

Adam chalks the whole encounter up to regular Apocalypse mandated weirdness and resolves to forget the whole thing ever happened.

 

Dean turns into a parody of himself by degrees. Adam privately thinks he and Michael must exist on an inverse scale. As things get worse, Dean grows harder. He loses emotions, turns to stone, shoots people just bitten instead of letting them say their goodbyes. Michael grows softer. He's more delicate about Adam, grows more brazen with public displays of confession, his kisses seem gentler each morning, more freely given, more loving.

He whispers "I love you" into Adam's skin every morning in every night. Into Adam's hair, his collarbone, his knees - Adam's body a catalog of Michael's feelings. Adam's not complaining. But it is a sign that things are growing worse.

There's a meeting once a month. The group taking stock. Dean is there. Adam. Michael. Castiel. Chuck too. Jane, their best shooter, as Adam had correctly guessed the first day. Kate, who Adam already liked for her name, who sometimes helps him in the medical tent. Jody, who used to be a sheriff and joined in through someone called Bobby. They have their roles in the camp. 

Castiel pops pills through each meeting, just to feel something. Adam turns cold when he realizes that he is Michael's choice of drug instead. That night Michael has to assure him it's real, it's all real, and Adam believes him, but knowing Michael must over emote to have emotion is scary nonetheless. 

"We need a plan," Dean says this meeting, as with every meeting. He sounds kind of bored saying it now.

Michael's fingertips skitter over Adam's knuckles. He's only half paying attention, Adam knows.

They're all frustratingly, stupidly resigned to the end. Little wind up toys gearing towards it.

"I still say we go after the old bastard," Jane says. "Go down in glory."

"It'll probably come to it," Dean says. He sounds tired. "Just not yet. I can't face him yet."

Michael's hand stills its exploration of Adam's. Adam turns to him and sees  _something_ in the downturn of Michael's lip. 

"You've got a plan?" Adam asks, quiet. Everyone looks at him regardless.

"Gabriel," Michael says after a pause.

Castiel perks up his head. "He's dead," he says. "Went down trying to buy us time."

"No," Michael says, "I'd know."

"Really?" Jody asks. "Seems like a bit too much mystical bullshit to be betting on it."

"I'd know," Michael repeats. His free hand clenches into a fist on the table. "Gabriel had pagan magic running through him as well as grace. It would take more than the usual to kill him. And he'd be good firepower."

"So where is he now?" Dean asks.

Michael shrugs. "Somewhere hiding out, waiting for this all to blow over. Alaska maybe."

"You want me to take a team out to Alaska?" Dean asks. "All on a wild goose chase?" 

"Only whoever wants to come," Michael says.

Dean looks around the seated group. "Well?" he asks. 

"Where Michael goes, I go," Adam says. "It's the way it works."

"What the hell," Jody says. "I'm game. It'll give me something to do around here."

Jane shrugs. "Me too. They'll need a good shot."

Dean sighs. "Fine. But we aren't going to wait up for you."

Adam notices he relented just as Castiel opened his mouth. There is something Dean still cares about in this world. 

 

They head out looking for Gabriel in an old jeep, the only car the camp can spare. 

Jody's at the wheel with Jane perched in the back as their lookout and sniper. Michael is crouched next to her, their eyes and ears. Adam is next to Jody in the front seat. He has to turn around to watch the camp recede into the distance.

When they come back four months later, Dean is dead.

 


End file.
